Iāve gotten used to so much pain and fear that my brain ended up not registering it as pain and fear, but the normal, and instead dwelled into fantasied of pain and fear being good, bringing relief, it ended up registering pain as pleasure, because when you live in fear relief from it is only thing close to pleasure you can experience. A big dose of endorphin your brain shoots thru your body after extreme experience of shock and pain, ends up being your escape, the place you feel relief at, because your body is drugged on chemicals that make the pain ease up for a moment, that make fear go away. Itās not a normal human experience, itās something lived under extreme circumstances, and itās devastating for this to happen to just one person, but I am now seeing this becoming a social phenomena, Iām seeing large groups of people not only experiencing this, but normalizing it, saying the pain and fear actually are pleasure, because those are only pleasures theyāve ever felt, itās only relief from cruel reality they ever get.
And even if that wasnāt enough, thereās now grooming, people convincing people that putting yourself in power of someone who fully intends to hurt you is āfreeingā, itās safe, itās sane, itās okay if you consent to it, so traumatized people who had some reserve about being harmed again, would feel reassured and then let their trauma get normalized, allow themselves to be retraumatized so they wouldnāt have to be experinencing the stress and pain of recovery from their original trauma.
I remember how scary it was for me to slowly acknowledge that my experience of emotions and pain wasnāt normal, wasnāt common and usual, that I wasnāt safe from harm at any moment of my life. It terrified me to acknowledge I was being harmed repeatedly every day of my life, and that my brain had to quit being healthy in order for me to survive. It was relief to latch onto sources that normalized trauma, where being suicial was just how everyone was, craving pain and harm was just, a trait some humans had for no reason whatsoever, where seeking out injury and harm and pain was, something anyone could experience. Where torture could be called āhealingā. It made me feel normal, like my experience of life was normal. It participated in my brainwashing so much, I ended up retraumatizing myself over and over, not realizing what I was doing, not realizing I was not safe, I was not being taken care of at all, not realizing I would in future, have flashbacks of same things I then described as āreliefā.
It did not help me. Normalizing traumatic experience of the world did not help me. I didnāt need to be reassured that my life was normal because it wasnāt. I didnāt need to be groomed into accepting torture as a part of life because it wasnāt. I didnāt need to be told consenting to torture was freeing because it wasnāt, no human being should be tortured at all. I didnāt need to be told being in presence of those who would enjoy my pain was safe, because it was the least safe place I possibly could be. And the glorifying of abusers and implying any of them could be ācomplex, misunderstood, and worthy of trustā helped me the least. Thereās nothing anyone needs to understand in people who enjoy inflicting pain on them.
Itās painful to watch. People believing itās safe to be hurt in intimate situations. Traumatized people reaching for it, knowing deep inside theyāre replacing self harm with allowing someone else to hurt them. Everyone else defending those who happily turn up to harm, to inflict pain, to torture. āBut the victims wanted itā becomes normal, righteous thing to say. And victims agree, they felt the pleasure was worth it, the high of the drugs that bring relief, was freeing them of being victims. It didnāt. It never will.
